Damon Knight - Orbit 20

“There are trees up there,” Victoria said, pointing.

“Snows up there just about every year, not much, but enough to keep them more or less green,” Farley said. “We’ll take it nice and easy. It gets a little steep and narrow up there, and, you’ll be happy to hear, cooler. I’ll go first and lead one of the pack horses, then you, Victoria, then Sam with the other pack horse. Okay? Just give Benny a loose rein and he’ll stay exactly where he knows he should.”

They zigzagged for the last hour of the climb; the curves became tighter, hairpin turns joining rocky stairsteps that let them look directly onto the spot where they would be in a few minutes. Then suddenly they were on the top, a mesa with welcome shade and waist-high bunch grass for the horses. The grass was pale brown and dry, but good graze. A startled hen pheasant ran across their path into the grass, closely followed by a dozen or more half-grown chicks. A hawk leaped from a tall pine tree into the sky and vanished, gliding downward behind the trees. From up here they could see other trails, most of them easier, but Farley would not bring horses up through the sparse woods and grasses. Such life was too precious on the desert, and horses were hard on trails. He had chosen the north climb because it was barren and rocky, and would suffer little damage from their passage.

“Do we get off now?” Victoria asked. She sounded strained.

Sam was already dismounting. He gave Victoria a hand. “Tired? Sore?”

“Tired and sore,” she said, standing stiffly, hardly even looking around. “And scared. My God, I’ve never been so scared in my life! What if that horse had stumbled? We’d still be falling!”

Sam laughed and put his arm about her shoulders. “Honey, you did beautifully. You came up like a bird.”

“I was afraid to move! What if I had sneezed, or coughed, or got hiccups? What if the horse had looked down?”

Serena had packed beef chunks and chopped vegetables, and within an hour stew was ready. They ate dinner ravenously and took coffee with them to the western end of the butte where they sat on rocks and watched the sunset over the Three Sisters in their chaste white veils.

No one spoke until the display was over and the streaks of gold, scarlet, salmon, baby pink had all turned dark. The snow on the Sisters became invisible and the mountains were simple shapes, almost geometrical, against the violet sky.

“They look like a child’s drawing of volcanoes,” Victoria said softly. Then: “Why do they call this Goat’s Head Butte? It certainly looks like no goat’s head I’ve ever seen.”

“A mistake,” Farley said. “The Indians called it Ghost Head, the source of Ghost River. A U.S. Geologic Survey cartographer got it wrong.”

Victoria drew in her breath sharply. “It really is called Ghost River!”

She sat between Sam and Farley. There was still enough light for them to see each other, but shadows now filled the valley below; the moon was not yet out. For what seemed a long time no one spoke. Farley waited, and finally Sam said, in a grudging tone:

“I didn’t know it then, Victoria, or I wouldn’t have said what I did.”

“Piece by piece it’s coming together, isn’t it?” she said. Before either of them could respond, she said, “We’re too far away.”

“What do you mean?” Sam asked.

Helplessly Victoria shrugged. “I don’t know what I mean. I think you have to be closer to feel anything. I don’t know why.”

Sam stood up, but Farley motioned him back. He put his hand lightly on Victoria’s arm. “Tonight we observe,” he said matter of factly. “Tomorrow we’ll crisscross the valley and tomorrow night we’ll camp down there. Relax, Sam. Just take it easy.” Without changing his tone of voice he asked, “Victoria, what did you see in that valley that night?” He felt her stiffen and tightened his clasp on her arm.

“I told you.”

“No. You told both of us your interpretation of what you saw. You translated something into familiar shapes. If you ask a primitive what something is that he never experienced before, he’ll translate it into familiar terms. So will a child.”

“I’m not a primitive or a child!”

“The part of you that interpreted what you saw, that has been reacting with terror, that part is primitive. I’m not talking to that part. I’m talking to the rational you, the thinking, sane you. What did you see? What was the first thing that caught your attention? Not what you thought it was, just how it looked.”

“A black dome,” she said slowly.

“No. Not unless you could see the edges beyond doubt.”

“A black shape, domelike.”

“Let’s leave it at a black shape. Are you certain it had a definite shape?”

“No, of course not. It was night, there were shadows, I was on the hill over it.”

He was silent a few moments, and finally Victoria said, “It was just black. I remember thinking it was a shadow at first, then it took on shape.”

Farley patted her arm. “Then?”

“There was a door, when it opened, a light showed . . . That’s not what you want, is it?”

“Just how it looked, not what you thought it was.”

“A patch of pale orange light. No. A pale glow. Orange-tinted. I thought of a door, the way light comes through an open door.”

They worked on it painstakingly, each detail stripped of interpretation, stripped of meaning. Victoria began to sound tired, and Farley could sense restless small movements from Sam.

“I knew they were vehicles of some kind!" Victoria cried once. “They reflected light, they moved like automobiles—in a straight line, gleaming, and they turned on headlights at the road.”

“But what you described doesn’t have to be vehicles,” Farley said. “What you said was clusters of gleaming lights, like reflections on metal.”

“I suppose,” she said wearily. “They were spaced like cars on a road, and they moved at the same speed, in a straight line, not up and down, or sideways, or anything. Like cars.”

“And when they turned on lights, could you still see the reflections?”

She sighed and said no, she didn’t think so.

“You’re getting tired,” Farley said gently. “We should get back to camp, get some sleep. One more thing, Victoria. Look down there now, the moon’s lighting the valley, probably not as brightly as that night, but much the same as it was then. If you had been up here that night, Victoria, would you have been able to see what you saw?”

Farley still had his hand on her arm. The moon behind them made her face a pale blur; it was impossible to see her features clearly, but he felt a tremor ripple through her, felt her arm grow rigid.

“No!” The trembling increased. “We’re too far away. You can’t see the road from here.”

“Not because we’re too far to see it,” Farley said. “The road’s lower over there than the valley is.”

“You mean I couldn’t have seen it from the hill either?” “No.”

Victoria rose unsteadily and stared at the valley, turned her entire body to look at the cliffs surrounding it.

“What is it?” Farley demanded. “You’ve remembered something, haven’t you? What?”

“This isn’t the right place.”

“It’s the place. You were over there. You can see the boulders, the pale shapes near the end of the ridge. Below that is the ranch road where you parked. It’s the right place.”

“It’s wrong! It isn’t the right place! I was on a hill. It wasn’t like that!” She closed her eyes and swayed. “I was on a hill, and I could hear ... I heard . . .”

“You heard what? You heard something and saw something and smelled something, didn’t you? What was it?”